Underwater Internal Imaging and Diagnostic Tool for Limpet Mines and IEDs for the EOD Mission

Imaging of underwater mines poses many challenges. A passive imaging system using muon tomography is proposed which will enable details of the components of an underwater mine to be imaged without touching the mine itself. Muons are naturally occurring, high energy subatomic particles that are entering our atmosphere continuously at a high flux density. They are effectively unimpeded by water. Since this is a passive system, it avoids many of the challenges posed by high power, active imaging systems with respect to deployability, portability and safety. Muon tomography is a demonstrated process used for scanning cargo containers for dense materials, including special nuclear materials. Image resolution increases with time of scan and density of the muon detector array. The proposed Phase 1 effort will demonstrate the technology to image a mine underwater using an existing muon detector system, and collect statistical data necessary to design a smaller, more compact system with muon detector arrays of the appropriate density. The program will focus on the tradeoffs between image resolution and time of scan, and detector array density/complexity.